This resonates a lot with me. At school I coasted, ignored all home work, never studied, and was a consistent C. I was continually told I could fo better by putting in some work (an objective viewpoint I agreed with.) But i had better things to do. I started programming in grade 7, from a book, with a Apple 2 (circa 1982). There were no forums, no Internet just me and a thin booket that came with the computer, plus l…
True when you happened to find just one of the soon best paying new activities. Catching butterflies would have worked out less awesome probably.
Proof you can do hard things
121–130 of 330 posts
Re: Proof you can do hard things
#122> But I recently realized there is a very good reason to take Calculus. It’s to prove you can do hard things.
This doesn't explain why Calculus over any other number of hard things.
Re: Proof you can do hard things
#123So you proved to yourself that you can do hard things, what then? You don't need to continue proving the same, doesn't then that stop being a fuel for motivation? That's what happened to me at least.
Re: Proof you can do hard things
#124I like the idea, but I’m gonna say that (a) calculus is more than a good challenge and (b) math is actually easy. To understand how things actually work, you need math, especially calculus. Deep learning? Calculus. Statistics? Calculus. Finance? Calculus. Physics? Calculus. Mech E, robotics, earth science, econ? Calculus. Second, calculus, like all math, is easy. Like that’s the point, it’s the science of simple thin…
>Second, calculus, like all math, is easy. Like that’s the point, it’s the science of simple things. That math is competitive and presented as a cryptic challenge is beside the point — it is designed to make it possible for anyone to reason for themselves and solve problems. The sense of impatience and criticism around math is totally unwarranted and isn’t good for anyone. lol, typical HN answer. Mathematics is not "…
> Being humble is one thing, but not realizing one's gift is another.
Very true, but this doesn't change the fact that math is actually simple, but it is generally taught so badly that most students can't "get" it.
I did a bit of private tutoring back when I was in college (and I'm still doing it for my own children), and every person learns in a different way. It is not always easy to find the right way to convey an idea, but once you find it you can see in the student's eyes how it just clicked.
Totally anecdotal, but I once helped someone who "didn't get how percentages work" get a really high (with respect to her previous attempts) GMAT score in maths.
Re: Proof you can do hard things
#125I agree in principle that your personal story is made of the rough things you've overcome, and it's refreshing to hear it stated in a positive way (calculus) as opposed to the usual negative way (abuse, alcoholism, etc). It misses something, though: Many people will slack endlessly on doing the hard thing until it appears to us to be a challenge we've come up with for ourselves. Then and only then does doing it the hardest way possible seem not just worthy of our time, but essential to our personal growth.
I'd argue that as long as someone reaches that attitude toward something that they choose, they have lived a good life. And that something doesn't need to be a high school math class. The hard thing could be trying to become a chef when you're 50, or deciding to write your next app in Assembly knowing none at all, or surviving a month in the woods, or going to a foreign country with the intention of learning the language. It has to be hard to make it worthwhile, but it has to be your own to make it valuable as an accomplishment to you, as opposed to something imposed on you which you merely endured. I think this is why a lot of people come out of incredibly hard ordeals in the military with much less personal sense of self-worth than they were sold they would get going in.
[edit: removed a critique. I had misinterpreted the words "errant period" to allude to something other than punctuation. My mistake.]
Re: Proof you can do hard things
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, the trap of the gifted student! When everything other students find somehow hard is easy for you, you get a delusion that nothing is hard, and that putting in some effort is not necessary. A rude awakening may come at high school, or at college. Those who kept toiling just keep toiling, and overtake you, because.you're not used to pushing through. I think it's important to learn early enough that things are usual…
This extends into life as well. I play golf (for fun [2]), which cunningly has a scoring system that tells me I'm objectively rubbish, and getting (mostly) worse. I've found this professionally useful in combating the seductive idea that "because I'm -really- good at one thing, I'm good at everything. " I've seen the opposite in customers sometimes. Doctors who are very good doctors, have strong feelings about UI (th…
I've found that one of the best ways to dismantle an overblown ego is to play StarCraft (Brood War or SC2, the result will be the same) or really any other 1v1 game. The direct feeling of being beaten, potentially overrun completely, time and time again, especially after putting in hard work is very humbling.
Fighting games are very good for this except they've always invited a certain mental block in people where they'll declare certain things "cheap" and end up offloading a lot of the humbling experience and not take it to heart. This type of scrub mentality exists everywhere but in fighting games it seems to come extra easy to people, perhaps because they have too many potential things they can blame (tier of their character, match-up supposedly being bad, etc.).
Re: Proof you can do hard things
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate the framing of problems and domains as hard because I found it so confusing when they turned out to be easy for me. It gave me a false sense of competence and superiority. Because I found calculus (and everything else in school people said was hard) easy, I thought I was just exceptionally capable and other people were incompetent and/or stupid. I didn't find out until much later (and it still feels like much…
> I think learning how to learn things that are hard FOR YOU is quite possibly the most important skill in life. I’d certainly agree it’s extremely valuable. There are some failure modes from taking it too far (like anything). People tend to be happier when they’re very good at things. You also contribute more to the world. If you’re always doing things that are hard for you, you won’t do as much or as well, really b…
This is very valuable advice.
Find a niche, do one thing and do it well. You do you.
Or if you want to be a generalist, that's very valid too, but again, you do you.
The constant glorification of growth and the massive industry built around it doesn't help.
Re: Proof you can do hard things
#128I agree in principle that your personal story is made of the rough things you've overcome, and it's refreshing to hear it stated in a positive way (calculus) as opposed to the usual negative way (abuse, alcoholism, etc). It misses something, though: Many people will slack endlessly on doing the hard thing until it appears to us to be a challenge we've come up with for ourselves . Then and only then does doing it the…
I believe Nat is referring to a full stop rather than menstruation in the sentence about crying into tiktok.
Re: Proof you can do hard things
#129I agree in principle that your personal story is made of the rough things you've overcome, and it's refreshing to hear it stated in a positive way (calculus) as opposed to the usual negative way (abuse, alcoholism, etc). It misses something, though: Many people will slack endlessly on doing the hard thing until it appears to us to be a challenge we've come up with for ourselves . Then and only then does doing it the…
It took me a while to understand what you were talking about at the end there. I think the author is referring to a grammatical period ('sorry' vs 'sorry.'), not the menstrual kind, lol.
Re: Proof you can do hard things
#130I agree in principle that your personal story is made of the rough things you've overcome, and it's refreshing to hear it stated in a positive way (calculus) as opposed to the usual negative way (abuse, alcoholism, etc). It misses something, though: Many people will slack endlessly on doing the hard thing until it appears to us to be a challenge we've come up with for ourselves . Then and only then does doing it the…
It took me a while to understand what you were talking about at the end there. I think the author is referring to a grammatical period ('sorry' vs 'sorry.'), not the menstrual kind, lol.
hahah. oops. I edited and removed that criticism. The exact line was:
>> We’ll cry into TikTok over an errant period at the end of a text message.
My brain read that as, "At the end of a text message, we'll cry into TikTok over an errant period." lol